Title | Small-world file-sharing communities |
Publication Type | Conference Paper |
Year of Publication | 2004 |
Authors | Iamnitchi, A., M. Ripeanu, and I. Foster |
Conference Name | INFOCOM 2004. Twenty-third AnnualJoint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies |
Pagination | 952 - 963 vol.2 |
Date Published | mar. |
Keywords | cache storage, content distribution networks, data grids, data-distribution systems, data-sharing graph, distributed file systems, file-sharing communities, Kazaa peer-to-peer network, peer-to-peer computing, peer-to-peer file sharing networks, Web caches |
Abstract | Web caches, content distribution networks, peer-to-peer file sharing networks, distributed file systems, and data grids all have in common that they involve a community of users who generate requests for shared data. In each case, overall system performance can be improved significantly if we can first identify and then exploit interesting structure within a community's access patterns. To this end, we propose a novel perspective on file sharing that considers the relationships that form among users based on the files in which they are interested. We propose a new structure that captures common user interests in data - the data-sharing graph - and justify its utility with studies on three data-distribution systems: a high-energy physics collaboration, the Web, and the Kazaa peer-to-peer network. We find small-world patterns in the data-sharing graphs of all three communities. We analyze these graphs and propose some probable causes for these emergent small-world patterns. The significance of small-world patterns is twofold: it provides a rigorous support to intuition and, perhaps most importantly, it suggests ways to design mechanisms that exploit these naturally emerging patterns. |
URL | http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/INFCOM.2004.1356982 |
DOI | 10.1109/INFCOM.2004.1356982 |